The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant eBook

24. The reflection of such a match as spotless
innocence with abandoned lewdness, is what puts this
vice in the worst figure it can bear with regard to
others; but when it is looked upon with respect only
to the drunkard himself, it has deformities enough
to make it disagreeable, which may be summed up in
a word, by allowing, that he who resigns his reason,
is actually guilty of all that he is liable to from
the want of reason.

TATLER, Vol. IV, No. 241.

Gaming.

SIR,

1. ’As soon as you have set up your unicorn,
there is no question but the ladies will make him
push very furiously at the men; for which reason,
I think it is good to be beforehand with them, and
make the lion roar aloud at female irregularities.
Among these I wonder how their gaming has so long
escaped your notice.

2. ’You who converse with the sober family
of the Lizards, are, perhaps, a stranger to
these viragoes; but what would you say, should you
see the Sparkler shaking her elbow for a whole
night together, and thumping the table with a dice-box?
Or how would you like to hear good widow lady herself
returning to her house at midnight and alarming the
whole street with a most enormous rap, after having
sat up till that time at crimp or ombre? Sir,
I am the husband of one of these female gamesters,
and a great loser by it both in rest my and pocket.
As my wife reads your papers, one upon this subject
might be of use both to her, and;

YOUR HUMBLE SERVANT.’

3. I should ill deserve the name of Guardian,
did I not caution all my fair wards against a practice,
which, when it runs to excess, is the most shameful
but one that the female world can fall into. The
ill consequences of it are more than can be contained
in this paper. However, that I may proceed in
method, I shall consider them, First, as they relate
to the mind; Secondly, as they relate to the body.

4. Could we look into the mind of a female gamester,
we should see it full of nothing but trumps and mattadores.
Her slumbers are haunted with kings, queens, and knaves.
The day lies heavy upon her till the play-season returns,
when for half a dozen hours together, all her faculties
are employed in shuffling, cutting, dealing and sorting
out a pack of cards; and no ideas to be discovered
in a soul which calls itself rational, excepting little
square figures of painted and spotted paper.

5. Was the understanding, that divine part in
our composition, given for such an use? Is it
thus that we improve the greatest talent human nature
is endowed with? What would a superior being think,
were he shewn this intellectual faculty in a female
gamester, and at the same time told, that it was by
this she was distinguished from brutes, and allied
to angels?

6. When our women thus fill their imaginations
with pips and counters, I cannot wonder at the story
I have lately heard of a new-born child that was marked
with the five of clubs.